BLUF: The three paragraph thank you letter that I set out to write quickly became a lot longer as I started typing. Once my fingers finished moving, it probably would have taken five additional hours of editing for it to read perfectly, but who has that kind of time unless they are writing for FORTUNE magazine or HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW? I hope you recognize my appreciation for all of your efforts and don't get stuck on the missing commas. Just saying "Thank You" just doesn't seem like enough. I am a Major in the United States Marine Corps and I have been listening to your podcasts since 2007. When I listened to Manager Tools for the first time - it was the one on how to pay for someone else to go out and eat as part of a professional meeting - something just clicked and I decided that going back and listening to all of your podcasts was worth my time. In my current billet we regularly deploy on Navy ships to project power throughout the Pacific and conduct theater cooperation with our regional partners and friends. This means that as a Marine I spend almost half the year at sea on amphibious ships. It is a great, demanding and rewarding job, and it also means that I have to wait until I get ashore to catch up on all the manager tool and career tools episodes. Due to some limitations at sea, I am unable to download the podcasts. All the same, I work 18 hours days, 7 days a week, so my mind is tired at the end of the day and I probably wouldn't really retain the good stuff anyway if I was able to get it. The work days back at home in Okinawa, Japan are long, but with a significant commute each day, I am able to catch back up. Manager Tools, Career Tools and Planet Money are all that I listen to until I'm caught up. There are so many things that I find fascinating about you, your podcasts and your business model. I'm sure that all of your subscribers provide some OK income, or at least supports the development of the podcast, but the consistent quality of your topics and the actionable items that you provide in no way are compensated by these very reasonably priced products. It took me several years, and a lot of life experiences to realize that you have created a quality self-licking ice cream cone. And I mean this in the most gracious and respectful way possible because it isn't about the money, it is about making this world (especially America) a better and more productive place. Your podcasts help create more successful managers and in turn they get promoted into positions that can hire you to consult and effectively improve them and their employees. Once I am stationed in CONUS again, I look forward to attending your conferences and bringing my star performers with me. This is probably several years away. Your influences show up unexpectedly in the strangest places. For the simplicity of email, I will just say that while we were recently deployed I had to bark a correction at a young Marine the other day that I knew was part of our unit of 2200 marines, but I didn't know exactly who he worked for. I found myself saying - without thinking - that I would "recommend" that he had better attention to detail when our Commander came by. The interaction only lasted about 30 seconds, but I walked away thinking "did I just "recommend" to a 19-year-old marine to correct himself?." I was slightly confused and slightly humored by my dialog. In the end it was effective. After listening to you regularly for six years, I can easily point out all the simple ways that you have influenced me and the way I conduct business and mentor the Marine around me (of all ranks). Some examples that are so simple, and really make a huge difference are: meeting agendas, keeping to the scheduled times for meetings, "recommending," not using less than 18 size font on powerpoint (it brings lots of strange stares initially when I tell this to people as I review content until we are presenting and nobody in the room is straining to see the words on the screen), who does what by when, communication is what the listener does (this usually takes 30-50 times of my saying this before they even understand what I am talking about; and the smart ones quickly staring struggling with ways to apply it with initial very poor results.)..and on and on. I must say that agendas alone set a tone and and indelible professional tone as new people check-in and as we are constantly working with new units. At this point in my career I would be challenged to try and list all the actionable items that I have heard on manager tools and career tools and apply regularly. Just to get this out of the way - I suck at regularly scheduled one on ones. However, when I regularly talk with my Marines I regularly make a concerted effort to make the conversation about their progress, their goals and their family...and I listen. And I still suck at regularly conducting one on ones. I have approximately 40 Marines that makes sure 2200 Marines spread across 3 Navy ships can conduct their business as uninterrupted as possible. I have 4 officers and a senior staff non-commissioned officer that would be considered directs and they have 2 levels of directs below them. As I know that you have a military background and might understand the jargon, I have been a reconnaissance battalion S4 that deployed to Fallujah, Iraq; a logistics battalion operations officer that deployed to Helmand Province, Afghanistan; spent 3 years in a joint billet at NATO Allied Command Transformation (one of the strategic-level military headquarters); and now I am S4 of the only constantly forward deployed Marine Expeditionary Unit. I regularly think about my future path and deep questions such as "if I still have opportunities in the Marine Corps do I keep moving forward and moving my family around, or do I figure out how to still be productive and transition to a different career with less moving around?" I'm 36, I have three young children with another on the way, so I plan on working for a long, long , long time. Quite frankly, I'm not sure what I really do in civilian terms. In the coming weeks I plan on contacting a military-friendly headhunter firm to not only try and figure out what I do in civilian terms, but to figure out how important such things as masters degrees and age are in transitioning to other career opportunities. Before listening to Manager Tools I was really having a challenge consistently understanding how to get hard workers to do good things and to create plans for them to excel professionally. Actually I was rather sloppy in my method for success. I understood what needed to happen, and I knew how to work more hours to achieve the mission, but I couldn't quite figure out how to asses and mentor subordinates to buy back time for myself and still accomplish the mission. I seem to keep getting "promoted" into more and more challenging positions. I know I am able to get A LOT more out of my team as a whole as the jobs have become exponentially more demanding. I'm always trying to think three or four steps ahead, but these days all I want to do is figure out how to spend more time with my family. It is professionally tricky when you finally start "professionally cracking the code" and creating a system that is efficient and repeatable and then you move on to a new and more challenging position that isn't established to a point where we can take the ball and keep improving, but instead need to create a framework and system that is repeatable and ready to be improved. I talk to all of the Marines and sailors of all ranks as soon as they check-in to my section. We discuss integrity, commitment vs compliance, any incidents of hazing and sexual harassment/assault means we have already failed our marines, we are communicated through not to (both down and up the chain of command), etc. There are two additional points that I highlight: 1. Mission Accomplishment (you need to know what is inside the box before you can think outside the box). By this I mean that if you don't know how you succeeded and can't deviate left and right or explain to someone else how you were able to be successful, then we haven't set ourselves up for long term success because we don't know why we obtained the result we did. It isn't repeatable. 2. The other is (paraphrased) that they are checking in to a unit that is more complex than most, however, they shouldn't finish their time here and just be happy that they "survived." They should understand that they had an experience. I want them to realize from the beginning that they can work hard and get by, or they can understand why we succeed and make us all better. If they go to their next unit and someone asks them how that were able to do X or Y and all they know is that they just survived somehow, then they will have wasted everybody's time because they could have paid better attention and been able to say that "this or that worked because we tried this thing and it just didn't work as well." There is no doubt in my mind that you have helped make some people incredibly successfully in the public sector. It pains me to even think that the Army (although long since departed from active duty) supported the Marines...so I won't. But what I can say is that incorporating many of your actionable items into a US military active duty leadership role has made me and the Marines and sailors around me better at our jobs and more effective at our mission. Thank you for all that you and the entire team does.

John